Iran: three January protesters executed in Karaj – what the court charged them with

Three men arrested over the anti-government protests of January in Karaj, west of Tehran, were executed on Sunday, November 8. Iran’s judiciary, through its Mizan news agency, announced the executions of Hassan Divband, Hamid Kazemi and Reza Zanganeh after the Supreme Court upheld their death sentences.

The Karaj Revolutionary Court had sentenced them to death and confiscation of all their property for “taking part in operational activities on behalf of Israel, the US and hostile groups” against national security. The authorities attribute to them attacks on public and government buildings on January 8 and 9, carrying weapons, arson and the destruction of an electricity substation that left parts of the city without power. The indictment speaks of 20 Molotov cocktails and 15 improvised explosive devices.

Divband, the first defendant in the case, was arrested on January 11 after a report from the Ministry of Intelligence office in Alborz province. The judiciary accused him of mobilising relatives and employees of his car workshop. Kazemi was alleged to have made the explosives and Zanganeh to have taken part in the sabotage of the power grid. Eight others were tried in the same case and sentenced to between five and ten years in prison. Divband and Kazemi cited financial hardship at trial, but the judicial authorities say they were well-off and are proceeding with the seizure of apartments, the workshop and vehicles.

Five executions in less than a week

The Kurdish human rights organisation Hengaw reports that the three were hanged in secret, at dawn, in an unnamed prison. They were tried by Branch 2 of the Karaj Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Sabzevari, and among the charges was “moharebeh,” “war against God.” Zanganeh, 27, a mechanic for foreign car brands and a resident of Malard, had been arrested on April 3. The organisation claims that the accusation that he cooperated with Mossad rested solely on his work and on earlier business trips.

On Tuesday, November 3, two other prisoners from the same protests, Amirhossein Maleki and Amirhossein Ebrahimi, had been executed, bringing the executions of protesters within six days to five. Hengaw records at least 710 executions in Iran since the start of 2026, of which 79 concern political or religious prisoners and 40 are linked to the January uprising. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, had counted in August at least 56 executions on national-security charges since March 19, 27 of them in cases arising from the protests.

The protests began on December 28, 2025 over the cost of living, quickly turned into an uprising against the regime and peaked on January 8 and 9. Tehran has admitted more than 3,000 dead and attributes the violence to “terrorist acts” that, it says, the US and Israel organised. At the time, Donald Trump had urged Iranians to keep protesting and to take over institutions, and a few days later he said Tehran had assured him it did not plan to execute protesters.